Roland MKS100

12 bit sampler from Japan 1986.

This was my first ‘pro’sampler…if you don’t count the Commodore Amiga. When I was a kid and started out making music  I really wanted a sampler, preferably an AKAI S1000…-but these things were very much out of reach financly, unontainable fantasies. Analog synths & Drummachines were dumped cheaply and could be picked up for next to nothing… but samplers were always thousands of guilders still. 

Then I came across this obsciure Roland MKS100 that was very much affordable for an adolescent bedroom studio producer.  A fun 12 bit sampler that can hold 4 samples of 2 seconds each. Spec wise underwhelming even next to an AKAI S700…but it did the job. Roland samplers of that era have an incredible ‘warm’ sound – not as much impact as an AKAI but a nice fuzzy wooley crispy digital artefacts.  This sampler is used a lot in my early stuff like the Dark Days / Space Force / Synths Below Sealevel albums.

The MKS100 is the rack version of the Roland S10 keyboard sampler.